Taking Instructions For A Will – ‘Why Do You Need All Of That Information?’

I am often asked “why do you need all that information?” when I am taking instructions to draft a Will.

It is important, as an advisor, to ensure that we obtain personal information such as details of your assets, a family tree and beneficiaries.

Assets

If you own a bank account or savings account, we need to know if you hold it in joint names or your sole name. If held in joint names, upon your death, the account will pass to the surviving joint account holder. If this has been set up for convenience, it could cause untold problems.

For example, if you have 3 children and 1 of them has been assisting you and for their convenience, you have added that child as a joint account holder, then that child would be entitled to receive all the monies in that account on your death. This may not have been your intention when setting up the account in this way as you may still think that, as the monies in the account are yours, then the account would be treated as an asset of your estate. This is not the case. Only sole accounts will pass directly into the residuary estate and your Will dictates how this is distributed.

Real property (i.e. houses, land etc) can be owned in your sole name, so it would fall into your estate on death or jointly, either as joint tenants (where the property automatically passes to the surviving owner(s) on the death of one joint tenant) or as tenants-in-common (where each person owns a separate share in the property, that can be gifted away during their lifetime, or which will pass on death under the terms of their Will or under the rules of intestacy).

Family Trees

You can often obtain a wealth of information from ascertaining family lines. It firstly proves that you have sufficient capacity to make a Will by the very fact that you know who your family are! It also can highlight other difficulties when drafting a Will.

If, for example, you are leaving your estate to your only child who has no children and you do not go any further in your Will, your estate would then be subject to a partial intestacy. Intestacy means you die without making a Will. A partial intestacy is where there is a Will, but there is no-one left to take the estate so the rules of intestacy would apply. This means that the estate could fall to elderly parents or a brother or sister who are well off or who are simply estranged. If this was likely to be the case, we would suggest considering a long stop provision in your Will, whereby the estate is left to a good friend or to a charity.

Beneficiaries

Full names, addresses and dates of birth are essential to properly identify a beneficiary.

Wills should not be one of those items that you keep putting off, we are very often told that we have put clients’ minds at rest and they had not appreciated the full extent of the service we provide when taking instructions for Wills.

If you are thinking of making a Will, please contact me on 01332 364436 or via my e-mail s.hilliard@timms-law.com.

Sara Hilliard
October 2020